Fabrication

It seemed like every week brought a new, awful incident of plagiarism or fabrication at news organizations large and small. My job was to write about all of them, to try and get more information about what happened and why, and to make sense of what was taking place.

A lot of the time I was rebuffed by senior newsroom staffers when asking for more information or basic disclosure.

“I was overwhelmed and succumbed to a lot of pressure I’d been under,” Roberts told the paper in an email. The paper’s copy editors discovered her fabrications while fact-checking names earlier this month; a subsequent review of Roberts’ work turned up more bogus sources. Roberts “has been removed from the paper’s staff,” the paper says. Read more

At a talk this afternoon in Miami, Jonah Lehrer acknowledged his plagiarism and fabrications and described how he hopes to redeem his reputation. Lehrer read prepared remarks then answered questions from Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen and the gathering at the closing lunch for the 2013 “Media Learning Seminar.” A liveblog of highlights appears beneath the video.

Lehrer was paid handsomely for the appearance. “Like most outside speakers at Knight events, he was paid an honorarium. In this case, it was $20,000,” says Knight spokesperson Marika Lynch by email. Ibargüen told The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, “We would typically pay a speaker sometimes more than that.”

A committee formed to investigate better ways of preventing and handling incidents of plagiarism and fabrication is asking newsrooms to share examples of internal policies and prevention practices related to these issues.

David Swartzlander, president of the College Media Association, said via email that he has no reason to believe that plagiarism and fabrication incidents at college newspapers have increased in recent years.

“If they have, I’m unconvinced that it is because students have used these practices with increasing frequency,” said Swartzlander, who is also journalism department chairman and assistant professor at Doane College in Nebraska. “Until presented with figures that can show more students are using these practices, I believe we have a sense that it is happening more because of digital media, which can expose these practices more widely and with much more ease than in previous generations.” Read more

Daily Collegian editor-in-chief Casey McDermott did not name the student in her note today, but the story she cites carries the byline of Nick Vassilakos. Poynter chose to include his name here to make it easier for others to review his work and to avoid implicating other Daily Collegian writers.

McDermott said that this was not the student’s first offense: Read more